Ida Elisabeth: My rambling review and experience

I believe I read about this book ... on a blog, or it was recommended to me in my Amazon shopping cart. Somehow I purchased it on Amazon et voila! I read it.

It is a book about a woman who doesn't always make the best choices in life, but toils ahead with the life she has. She does her best. She wavers between instinct and principle but she is not confrontational. There is love and there is loss and there is an appreciation for simple things and individual spirit in her story. It is very much a character study.

This book was a strange emotional read for me. I started out, not liking this book, the character, or any of the other supporting characters very much or at all.

I stuck with it. Why? Because there would be little quotes (I'm sorry I don't have examples. I didn't mark the pages) of narration or dialogue that would just jump out at me and I would think, "Yes, I understand!" or "Yes, that is how I feel." or "I bet a lot of people feel that way on the inside." *very child like thoughts, I know, but this is a true account of my brain.

In the beginning this didn't matter for me and Ida. It didn't sway me from how I felt about the character. Though I admit I began to like the book.

Then slowly I realized, a lot of the things I disliked about the character were things either I saw in myself, or my pet peeves about other people  (not the one and the same. I mean either, or). For example: Afraid to aspire to anything more than what is (me). Passive Aggressive Martyring (pet peeve in others).

See, this is another great thing about reading outside your comfort zone. You think you know ... but you don't. It's not that simple, these things, such as life, and love. No doubt we love our partners and our families, yet how we love them, how we support them, how we define what each needs and how we are capable of answering that need is different.

Before the last few chapters, Ida and I ... our relationship had evolved. I was looking at this book with different eyes. I was still kind of cursing at it under my breath and shaking my head a lot but I felt like it was my journey now too, and I couldn't judge with the same harshness I had before.

I paused before the last two chapters or so.

And then, I finished it. And I felt deflated. It wasn't a bad ending per se. I realize that I had hoped for more. It was most definitely a character study.